IFAK stands for Individual First Aid Kit — a kit built to treat one person's life-threatening trauma, not general cuts and scrapes or multiple casualties. That purpose shapes everything about it, starting with size — an IFAK is small enough to mount on a belt, vest, or bag for one-handed access under stress, usually holding just the essentials: a tourniquet, hemostatic gauze, a chest seal, a pressure bandage, and gloves. "Medical kit" is the broader umbrella term, covering everything from an IFAK to a vehicle kit, a classroom kit, or a mass casualty kit, each sized and stocked differently depending on the setting and how many people it needs to treat. If you're outfitting yourself for daily carry or a duty belt, start with an IFAK; if you're stocking a vehicle, classroom, or team, look at our broader medical kits.

All three earn a place on this page for different reasons. The CAT has the strongest track record of any commercial tourniquet — the Official Tourniquet of the U.S. Army since 2005, credited with more confirmed field saves than any other model, with a one-handed application that's about as fast and intuitive as it gets. The SOF Tactical Tourniquet trades the CAT's polymer windlass for a machined, aircraft-grade aluminum one and folds down smaller, which makes it a favorite for tight spaces like an ankle kit. The SWAT-T works completely differently, using a stretch-and-wrap elastic band instead of a windlass, and its real strength is versatility — the same device can double as a pressure dressing, a sling, a way to secure a splint, or a tourniquet small and stretchy enough for a pediatric or K9 limb. That versatility comes with a trade-off in occlusion reliability compared to a windlass design, which is why most people carry it as a secondary or specialty tool rather than a primary tourniquet.

Hemostatic gauze is dressing material treated with an agent that speeds up clotting on contact with blood. Kaolin, used in products like Combat Gauze, works by activating your body's own clotting cascade, so it performs best on a patient whose coagulation system is intact. Chitosan, used in products like Celox, works differently: it binds directly to red blood cells independent of the clotting cascade, which is why it holds up better on a patient who's cold, in shock, or on blood thinners. It's meant for wounds a tourniquet can't reach, like the groin, armpit, or torso, or for bleeding that continues after a tourniquet is already applied. The Rapid formulation of Celox needs only about a minute of compression, compared to the three minutes required by standard combat gauze.

CoTCCC stands for the Committee on Tactical Combat Casualty Care, the Department of Defense body that evaluates and approves medical devices for battlefield and tactical use based on evidence rather than marketing claims. A device on the CoTCCC list, like a CAT tourniquet or Celox hemostatic gauze, has been tested against alternatives and found to meet a performance standard the military relies on for its own medics. It's a useful shortcut when comparing products, since it filters out devices that haven't been independently vetted.

M.A.R.C.H. is the treatment sequence taught in Tactical Combat Casualty Care for working through an injury in the order it's most likely to kill: Massive hemorrhage first, since uncontrolled bleeding is the most common preventable death in trauma, then Airway, Respirations (chest injuries and breathing), Circulation (shock and less obvious bleeding), and Hypothermia prevention, since blood loss itself drops body temperature, and a colder patient clots blood less effectively, compounding the original bleeding problem. The point of working through the letters in order is to treat what's most likely to kill first, rather than whatever injury looks the worst. Our M.A.R.C.H. category is organized the same way, so you can shop by which step of the sequence you're stocking for.